Hi everyone. I wanted to provide you with advance notice that we are planning for a brief downtime on the Office Live Small Business and Office Live Workspace Community sites on Sunday, Nov. 15. The downtime will last only 30 minutes, and is scheduled to happen between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific time. The downtime is occurring in order to perform hardware upgrades to the servers for our Community sites...

Hey Office Live fans: Do you blog? Do you use Microsoft Office? Last but not least, do you want to see the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, B.C.? If so, then we have a contest for you. To show what people can do with Office 2010, Microsoft has launched a new contest that will give two bloggers the chance to showcase their talents, and to demonstrate the power of Office 2010 to help you get your...

If you run a small business, you know that social media marketing and online services are all the rage, but do you really know how to get started? Well, we're here to help! This month, we've launched a series of informal events in 20 cities across the United States and Canada called "Hands-On Small Business." These are gatherings of small-business owners who really want to get down...

The state of the economy has entrepreneurs cutting back everywhere they can. But one area where you shouldn't cut back is in giving back. The OC Register recently spotlighted Earth Friendly Products , a Southern California company that makes environmentally friendly cleaning products. Thanks to record-breaking quarterly profits, the company is giving its employees bonuses equal to a week's...

Anyone who knows me knows I like to move fast. I like to talk fast, walk fast, and act fast. No wonder that I've taken so well to Twitter, the social networking tool where the messages you post have to be 140 characters or less. Twitter is the latest illustration of something I'll call "keep it short," a point that is well illustrated in this BusinessWeek article . The author highlights...

Have you ever tried to market your products or services to the federal government? The government is a great client — and the feds are required to award a percentage of their contracts to small businesses. But for a small company, navigating the processes, acronyms, and requirements of dealing with such a big customer can be intimidating and frustrating. Marketing to the government requires a...

Do you have a Facebook profile? For your business? For yourself? I've blogged a lot here about social media, but when I added Facebook to my social media toolkit a while back, I was a little confused at first. Did I need a profile page? Lots of my friends have them, but they seemed too "personal" — and I didn't want just anyone to be able to post stuff on my Wall. I finally...

If your company sells Business-to-Business products or services, new research shows that your small business may actually have an edge over large corporate competitors. Surprised? According to research firm Warrillow & Co ., in a recent study, 45 percent of entrepreneurs surveyed said they were interested in buying products or services from local suppliers. Why did these entrepreneurs trust smaller...